The final book retails for $5 more than its predecessor two years ago, but don't imagine your bookseller cashing in. Neither is the online giant, Amazon.com, even as it mobilizes to distribute more than 1.6 million copies of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" Saturday.

When it comes to the loopy economics of J.K. Rowling's series, the pot of gold looks more like a leaky cauldron.

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, told shareholders that the company won't make a profit from its military-scale, satellite-guided distribution of the book. By slashing the retail price, all he can hope for is repeat business.

If the online leader finds itself neutralized selling the most popular book in history, consider Liz Murphy, owner of The Learned Owl in Hudson.

She expects thousands of Potterheads to converge Friday night as she hosts the last giddy transformation of her picturesque town into Diagon Alley. And while her phone won't stop ringing, and her bookstore has tallied 1,700 advance orders, all Murphy desires -- after collapsing Saturday -- is to break even.

"This year I got smart and hired an event coordinator and a publicist," said the dignified Murphy, who has arranged for a cadre of artists to paint Potter-themed windows for some 60 Hudson businesses. "I'm sleeping at night, at least a little. But I have my entire staff working on Harry Potter, and it's expensive to produce a party for 20,000.

"I'll be happy to break even. I might not even do that."

No theater would slash the ticket price for a new Harry Potter movie, but Murphy finds she, too, must discount the book. Her decision to give 10 percent of her take to the charity First Book of Akron seems to have spurred orders.

Some booksellers who reveled in the initial Potter phenomena show battle fatigue now. And as the discounts became embedded -- and expected -- peddling Potter near cost can feel like the equivalent of free downloads of music.

"I'm going to be glad when Saturday is over," said Jane Kessler, who owns Appletree Books in Cleveland Heights. "What a headache. Everybody is in a dither."

The 86-year-old proprietor won't host a midnight extravaganza. She decided an 8 a.m. breakfast with the 764-page book was ample. She is also offering a 25 percent discount.

"It sells because both parents and children are reading it," said Kessler, who was a child psychologist on the faculty of Case Western Reserve University before she bought Appletree. "It gives children a big ego boost to be reading an adult-sized book."

Publishers could wish for a little of that magic
Scholastic Books looked clairvoyant in 1996, when it bid $105,000 for U.S. rights to Rowling's then-unpublished first book, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." The sixth book accounted for 8 percent of Scholastic's revenues and one-third of profits in the fiscal year that ended May 2006.

And yet, Scholastic's stock is below where it was five years ago, although it is up nearly 28 percent from July 2006, a Potterless year. Financial analysts complain that the company loses focus in the strain of bringing out the books, whose press run logs a mind-boggling 12 million copies this year.

It's worse for Bloomsbury, the British publishing house responsible for giving Rowling a chance. Even as Bloomsbury holds rights to all her books outside the United States, its stock has shriveled 40 percent in the last year -- the victim of investor fear that it has become a one-trick pony.

In a reversal of the classic shafted-writer story, the individual poised to make millions from the last book is Rowling herself, money that will join her estimated net worth of $1.2 billion before this final flourish.

What of the other writers waiting to be published?
Suzanne DeGaetano, co-owner of Mac's Backs, sees Harry Potter not as a profit center, but an opportunity to stitch her store more snuggly into the fabric of the Coventry community. She is setting up a typewriter Friday night on the sidewalk for fans to write their own endings and is dressing up as the character Nymphadora Tonks.

"I feel really privileged to be part of this world and all the excitement," DeGaetano said. "Customers come in, and we talk endlessly about the books. This is like the 500-year flood. Harry Potter is the 500-year book."

Even if a publisher has nothing to do with Potter -- like David Gray of Gray & Co. in Cleveland -- he finds his own printing delayed, as production of so many copies of one children's book warps press capacity.

"And what of the writer or publisher trying to score magazine, TV or radio time this summer for his sensitive first novel or delightful beach read?" Publisher's Weekly Editor Sara Nelson asked in her column. "Good luck: summer 2007 is already and will forever be remembered as all Harry Potter, all the time."

Dave Ferrante, who in February opened Visible Voice in Cleveland's Tremont neighborhood, took 30 orders for the final book just by answering his phone. He decided his bookstore is too new to host a party, but his manager and he toyed with breaking the bookselling embargo as a way to generate some outlaw publicity.

Reportedly, a retailer in New York sold an embargoed copy to The New York Times, which reviewed the book Thursday The Baltimore Sun also published a Thursday review, justifying it as news.

Meanwhile, some 1,527 cost-conscious readers have reserved "Deathly Hallows" from the Cuyahoga County Public Library.

To satisfy the first batch of borrowers, library truck drivers must muster themselves to work in Parma at 4 a.m. They will deliver hundreds of copies of "Deathly Hallows" to all 28 branches before doors open at 9 a.m. Saturday.

So far, some 570 readers who got on the list early have notified librarians that they'll skip the delivery and be at Parma headquarters to begin their final sortie with Harry Potter. They can expect punch from a cauldron. Free reading starts at midnight.

Harry by the numbers
64 -- Number of living languages the books have been translated into. (It also has been translated into Latin).

$500 million -- Estimated cost of Universal Orlando's Harry Potter attraction, scheduled to open in 2009.

325 million -- Copies of the first six books sold in the Harry Potter series.